Journal of a small indoor organic grow

This journal will be home to my notes and shitty phone pics of things happening in my garden.

Some background info:

I live in a legal rec state with a 4 plant flowering limit, but I normally only have 1-3 in flower at a time. I use mostly regular seeds and clones of previous plants I liked.

I started with potting soil and bottled nutes in 2018, and maybe 6 months later I also started a worm farm and hot compost pile. As the EWC aged I began using more of that and dry amendments, and by summer of 2019 I had made a fresh batch of soil for a new grow which I used that fall and have been recycling it ever since. This has really become more of a soil-building project, I guess. I'll add more info and thoughts on my soil, watering, and worm farm later.

I keep the soil in totes in my grow room labeled with the date I started filling that tote with rootballs + notes of any amendments I might add over time, and work from the oldest tub. The soil usually sits for 4+ months before I use it again. I turn the soil every few weeks and add water as needed.

Seeds go from a paper towel => 6-pack starter cell => 3.5" square => 1g nursery pot, all in FFHF + my EWC + myco and mulch. They veg under 100w T5 hanging in a storage rack turned seed starter, clone and veg cabinet. Bigger plants veg in a 2x4 with 195w of 4k LED set at ~48".

Just short of 5 weeks after seedlings stand up and open, I transplant to 3g fabric pots with my mix + EWC + myco and mulch. 4 days later, at 5 weeks old, they go into the 4x4 flower tent with 550w 3K LED dimmed to maybe 60%, so ~330 watts. The light is fixed at 72"

I clone everything at 2-3 weeks of 12/12 and keep my favorites to take the place of any males or intersex plants I have to kill down the road. Everything I don't keep gets chopped up and fed to the worms, heavier sticks to the outdoor compost pile.

I start new seeds near the end of one grow so that the Week 5 starting point of the new plants is roughly the date I think the current plants will be finished.

Current round at ~65 days for the seed plants, ~55 days for the clone

2 x Norstar Genetics Chelumbian (Exodus Cheese x Santa Marta Colombian Gold)
2 x AK Bean Brains Purple Hindu Kush x NL1

Chelumbians were 2/2 female and couldn't be more different in structure/growth. This is one of the things I love about growing.



But the flowers look and smell pretty close to each other. The small dark #2 is slightly faster than the branchy #1.

I'm guessing the #1 is closer to a Colombian structure and the #2 I guess the Exodus? #1 has a feral look to it, like what I would expect from a wild plant.




CHBN #2





Both are going to be low yielders relative to the other plants I've grown. The #2 will probably be the smallest yet. But very interesting. The smells so far are kind of a musty tropical fruit, but #2 is more musty than fruity, and #1 is a little less musty at the moment. Neither are particularly loud.

CHBN #1 has been showing bananas in the last week or two but none seem to be finishing and making pollen. No bananas on #2 that I've found.

The PHK x NL1 seeds gave me 1 female with more tapered, pointy leaves, and one male with darker, blunt tipped rounder leaves. The male looked great but showed clusters of bananas along with normal male preflowers, and a single weird little pod that looked like a female preflower that had a single pistil and several bananas poking out.

This is the female on the left, along with a keeper clone of an Oregon Green Seed variety I stuck in after killing the male PHNL





The PHNL is in my top 5 of both loudest and best-smelling plants I've grown. Maybe top, period. It absolutely reeked but it was a bright, very sweet floral smell from very early on. Much earlier than most for me. Now getting a little more musty or ripe smelling as it starts to finish. It has started showing a couple bright yellow/green spots that look like bananas about to pop out, but they don't. Visible in the cola pic.

Odd thing about this plant...both cuttings failed. I took them from the lower branches like I always do, same time I always do, and it was like the branches were already way into flower. There were no signs of reverting to veg. Normally I only have rooting issues with cuttings from older, unhealthy clones. Even cuts that don't eventually root usually show bumps before they run out of juice. This PHNL was soft and green and did nothing.

The clone next to it is a Sour Grape Ape Kush I've been keeping. It's a Bubba Kush x (Grape Ape/chem 2008 x Purple Kush/chem 200. Tastes like bubba and chem and something like dark dried fruit hiding in there. Love it!

A couple other keeper clones I have atm. Bodhi Chem Kesey on the left and AKBB Blueberry x Big Skunk on the right.

They went into the 3g early because they were getting pretty beat and I wanted healty cuts to keep, at least of the CK. BBBS also probably, I'll decide after this one's done. So when the first two flowering plants are done, I'll take cuts from both of these before moving them to the flower tent.

8-12 weeks or so after that, depending on how much flower all of the above yields, I'll start seeds for the next round.